Although it would be silly to expect much better from The Spectator, this is an shockingly bad article which does little more than say “some metrics are better therefore green policies are shit”.
But stating "best decade in human" history is really tongue in cheek. You could has well hand pick other indicators and state "end of the world signs were clear starting from 2010":
- The biggest economical power in the world, China, is now turning into 1984
- 60 % of the insect species considered extinct, and because of us
- Micro plastics everywhere
- USA general opioid addiction
- For the first time literacy, IQ and lifespan decrease in some occidental countries
- Obesity and diabetes epidemics
- Highest difference between rich and poor in centuries, while the former never paid such low taxes.
- Mass surveillance and black torture sites are now considered standard practice
- Extremism rising
- Mega corporations now have more economical power than some small countries
- Ads, ads everywhere. Comments are ads. Articles are ads. The entire internet has been sold to PR companies.
- Huge revealed scandals (panama papers, PRISM, Epstein, snowden, equifax...) ended up with no consequences for the criminals, screaming to the world that the powerful can actually do whatever they want
- Health care and justice systems in rich countries are saturated
- Jails are businesses, filled mostly with males from a few minorities.
- The population is violently divided on major political issues: Trump in the US, Brexit in the UK, Gilets Jaunes in France, Hong Kong in China...
- Privacy is at a all time low with the rise of IoT and smart speakers/cameras to complement the already omnipresent internet trackers and ubiquitous phones
- Star Wars 9
Not disagreeing with your main point, but positivism doesn't mean what you think it does (you wanted "positivity" instead.)
noun: positivism
1. a philosophical system that holds that every rationally justifiable assertion can be scientifically verified or is capable of logical or mathematical proof, and that therefore rejects metaphysics and theism. a humanistic religious system founded on positivism. another term for logical positivism.
2. the theory that laws are to be understood as social rules, valid because they are enacted by authority or derive logically from existing decisions, and that ideal or moral considerations (e.g., that a rule is unjust) should not limit the scope or operation of the law.
I guess also the problem here is that many statements about things getting worse are very subjective, whereas the article tries to focus on objective metrics like absolute poverty, metals usage, etc. And it takes a global view.
Your list is pretty large but, for instance, you say "ads everywhere". The internet has been funded by ads for decades. Did it objectively get moreso in the past decade? And if so, isn't the worseness of this purely subjective given that many services we enjoy may not exist without ads or, possibly, would be charged for and thus available only to the rich, in rich countries? This is highly debatable. Whereas "child mortality is at record lows" is metric-based and objectively good.
Also many of these are very USA specific, but the worst places to live are really outside the USA. If your child died of TB "too many ads" and "the rise of smart speakers" is going to seem really trivial in comparison. No quantity of ads will counterbalance even a small rise in child mortality as a problem.